It might be a tired cliché, but I really do believe that books can change people. I should know, because books have certainly changed me more than once. To my experience, a book may change your perception of the world around you, your behaviour towards other people, or who you want to be as a person. Above all, a book enables you learn new and exciting stuff.

The MLitt in Publishing Studies is my second postgraduate degree after a MA in Transnational Literary Studies and a BA in English & American Studies and Book Studies. For ggod measure, I also threw in an amazing semester abroad doing English at the University of Mississippi. So as you can see, I like learning quite a lot, and that’s where publishing comes in.

Publishers ultimately decide what we learn and how we change simply by deciding which books (or journals, magazines etc.) to publish. This isn’t even a romanticised way of looking at an incredibly competitive business sector, it’s simply a fact. Academic publishers shape the academic discourse with their output, whereas trade publishers influence how we think about the topics they deal with. Just some examples: Harry Potter certainly affected what people think about when they hear the word “wizard”, as did Twilight in respect to “vampires”. You don’t even have to like these books, nor do their publishers necessarily have to treat them as anything other than essential products to keep their business running. They still change stuff. Sometimes even in more meaningful ways than getting people to argue about whether the undead should sparkle in the sunlight.

To be part of this process, to choose which content to publish, to find ways of getting the books you feel passionate about to as many people as possible, is an incredibly exciting prospect to me. And that’s why I’m here.

Aloha! Howdy! Guten Abend! Et cetera!

I am Manchester, born and raised. My home city is a big reason I’m hoping to start a career in Publishing. The character of the place (loud, proud, sometimes a proper pain in the backside but never dull) lends itself to books (it was recently named a UNESCO city of literature) and I’m a firm believer that the world needs a view of England that isn’t just London.  We’re talking 3 million people at the heart of the electric crowded north waiting to stand up and be heard rather than, once again, being shouted over by the chaotic and egotistical mass that is our capital city. The North is a relatively untapped market, and publishing’s always been at its best when it steps out its comfort zone. There are also a bunch of super cool new publishers springing up across Manchester and our neighbouring cities Leeds and Liverpool, so it’s an exciting time!

However, my interest in Publishing isn’t just restricted to that stuff. I wanted to be a book when I was a kid. Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach transformed the dumb little terror who everybody thought was gonna end up growing up into a criminal. Suddenly I was a little terror who spent all day reading, dreaming of enormous flying peaches and huge friendly insects and huge metropolises in the clouds where cloud monsters live. It was awesome.

Good books stick in your head through your life.

And over the last two years before starting this master’s I realised how important that is. The world can be a dreary place that sucks you dry until you’re just a shadow of the person you were. Depression and anxiety could menace you any minute, and sometimes it feels like the whole world is going mad. So anything that makes living fulfilling and worthwhile should be embraced like crazy. If I could help deliver one picture book about sentient bugs that inspires a kid to get into reading, or one poetry collection that helped somebody deal with their depression, whether it’s as a writer, a commissioning editor, a copy editor, a marketer, or the dude hauling heavy crates of books through an Amazon warehouse, then I’d make myself proud!